How is silence on shift hive still a thing?

I played a few rounds on a server that doesn't run ghoul's balance mod lately, and I noticed that in vanilla, silence is still on shift. Why?

Of course this is just my opinion, but it seriously fucks with me, considering how shift is the overwhelmingly most popular first hive in pub and that every skulk worth a damn runs silence, completely negating my ability to locate them by sound.

In the balance mod, silence is back on shade, which does not only make sense lore wise, but also provides an actual drawback to using it, because you get neither celerity nor echo. But right now? Shift is the glorious catch all über hive, with echo, celerity and silence. Surely I'm not the only one who is seriously annoyed by this?

Comments

But remember "celerity and silence together are too op" That's why it was moved in the first place.

If silence goes back on shade then you can go celerity + silence again. Unless you move celerity to shade hive too, which would make even less sense than silence on shift.

I personally think silence combined with aura or focus is far more deadly and "op" than silence + celerity could ever be. (Not to mention the all powerful rookie destroying combination of silence + vampirism)

well that requires aliens to have 2 hives in the first place. And personally I'd rather play against silence + celerity skulks than against skulks that have silence (which is incredibly strong early game) and the ability to fast expand with RTs due to the echo.

The theme I was trying to portray is that silence isn't nearly as strong as people (the devs included) make it out to be.. and it certainly doesn't need a nerf.

I also find it strange that I've never once heard any casual/ rookie players complain about it.. Seems to only be the higher skilled vets with thousands of hours that complain when they die to a silent skulk...

The theme I was trying to portray is that silence isn't nearly as strong as people (the devs included) make it out to be.. and it certainly doesn't need a nerf.

I also find it strange that I've never once heard any casual/ rookie players complain about it.. Seems to only be the higher skilled vets with thousands of hours that complain when they die to a silent skulk...

Yes. Because someone who is not aware of his surroundings in the first place is not affected (as much) as someone who is.

Plus I imagine if you die to pretty much everything all the time anyway, you don't care/notice if the thing that killed you made sounds.

1. Shift hive is now the most powerful first hive upgrade further reducing the value of the other hives
2. You can combo cele skulks with silence skulks which adds unnecessary cognitive load to marines early game (ie they have to constantly guess what upgrade aliens are using). Not great for newbies or vets alike

What reasoning behind the move from shade to shift? I cant find it in the patch notes.

What reasoning behind the move from shade to shift? I cant find it in the patch notes.

IIRC the change was done due to how efficient the combination of phantom (silence) and celerity was around that time. It should also be noted that most of the people who were in charge of the balance / comp mod around that time had kinda a "going back to the roots (ns1) " vibe (which included bringing back metabolize, hmg etc.), so moving silence to the shift (movement) hive made a lot of sense in that context because silence is a movement chamber upgrade in ns1.

I personally think the issue with silence is caused by two things:

The damage audio feedback is completely broken right now and we are about to fix it for the next build, which means that with silence you can basically land a hit before the marine is able to react based on the visual feedback (which is delayed compared to the audio feedback).

Silence like some other upgrades has no trade off which causes it to synergize with other upgrades without limitations. Something that could be tried is for example a movement speed reduction as trade off for being silent.

The above is my personal opinion on the matter and shouldn't be taken as statement what will be done balance wise in the future!

What reasoning behind the move from shade to shift? I cant find it in the patch notes.

IIRC the change was done due to how efficient the combination of phantom (silence) and celerity was around that time. It should also be noted that most of the people who were in charge of the balance / comp mod around that time had kinda a "going back to the roots (ns1) " vibe (which included bringing back metabolize, hmg etc.), so moving silence to the shift (movement) hive made a lot of sense in that context because silence is a movement chamber upgrade in ns1.

I personally think the issue with silence is caused by two things:

The damage audio feedback is completely broken right now and we are about to fix it for the next build, which means that with silence you can basically land a hit before the marine is able to react based on the visual feedback (which is delayed compared to the audio feedback).

Silence like some other upgrades has no trade off which causes it to synergize with other upgrades without limitations. Something that could be tried is for example a movement speed reduction as trade off for being silent.

The above is my personal opinion on the matter and shouldn't be taken as statement what will be done balance wise in the future!

It would be good if any future changes to gameplay such as this could have a quick one liner explaining why it was done.

1. Shift hive is now the most powerful first hive upgrade further reducing the value of the other hives
2. You can combo cele skulks with silence skulks which adds unnecessary cognitive load to marines early game (ie they have to constantly guess what upgrade aliens are using). Not great for newbies or vets alike

What reasoning behind the move from shade to shift? I cant find it in the patch notes.

1. I disagree Shift Hive ist most powerful only because it is meta on Pubs. Every hive is valuable as starting hive.
2. Yes, marines have to constantly guess what upgrades aliens are using. They have also to guess where aliens are on the map, where and when there are ambushs, where they are attcking, defending, rotating, laning, expanding, using PVE... The game is full of it and that is GOOD. Also, you have to guess if Aura, Focus or Vampirism... if Carapace, Crush or Regen.

1. Shift hive is now the most powerful first hive upgrade further reducing the value of the other hives
2. You can combo cele skulks with silence skulks which adds unnecessary cognitive load to marines early game (ie they have to constantly guess what upgrade aliens are using). Not great for newbies or vets alike

What reasoning behind the move from shade to shift? I cant find it in the patch notes.

1. I disagree Shift Hive ist most powerful only because it is meta on Pubs. Every hive is valuable as starting hive.

Let's compare.
Shift has celerity, which has always been a crutch for many; silence, which completely negates marines' ability to track you without seeing or scanning you, and echo, which allows the commander to teleport structures around, which is pretty useful early game. Oh, and adrenaline. Apparently some gorges like it. I don't remember seeing anyone use Adrenaline in ages. Celerity is just so much better.

Shade has Aura - short ranged wallhack that is, a lot of the time, not much better than audio; Focus, which no one ever seems to use, ever; Vampirism, which is pretty neat, but not a major game changer, and Shade, which counters Arcs. (Not very useful early game.)

Crag has Regen, which often isn't better than running back to the closest hive/crag and also gives your position a way (healing sound), Carapace, which is absolutely crucial in comp, but that pub skulks can generall do without, and crush, which is extremely niche. Also, healwave. Yay, healwave.

My point is that shift is extremely useful to everyone, and the main drawback of the other hives right now is that you don't get shift hive's benefits.

2. Yes, marines have to constantly guess what upgrades aliens are using. They have also to guess where aliens are on the map, where and when there are ambushs, where they are attcking, defending, rotating, laning, expanding, using PVE... The game is full of it and that is GOOD. Also, you have to guess if Aura, Focus or Vampirism... if Carapace, Crush or Regen.

"Cognitive load" is not a valid argument imo.

Yes, but the other upgrades don't make your ears unreliable. If the enemy has carapace or crush or focus I still shoot the skulk. If they have silence, I need to constantly check my back and lose track of them in fights much more easily.

If you didn't have to check your back and didn't lose track of them in fights then silence would become useless. Nerfing silence by having it make noise is dumbing the game down to make things easier for marines.

Remember it was already nerfed by being split in two (phantom became silence and vampirism) and now requires you to sacrifice celerity/adren (as well as focus/aura if you want the full 'phantom' upgrade of silent cloaking)

There's also other ways of countering it (scans, forward observatories, using teamwork and covering each other) They even added the hp bars to help marines keep track of aliens (they do nothing to help aliens track marines)

I think silence needs a bit of a Nerf. I love using it, but I think it makes the game less fun overall. When you can't use your ears to play, the game feels broken, and even more confusing than it already is.

I'd like to see silence instead reduce the radius of the sounds you make to something very small, but have them play at half volume within that radius. This would retain its utility for getting around the map without detection, and getting within bite distance, but would negate it's effect once you are in close combat.

I feel like half of the benefit of silence right now is that it makes combat so confusing for Marines, and I don't think that makes for very fun gameplay.

I think silence needs a bit of a Nerf. I love using it, but I think it makes the game less fun overall. When you can't use your ears to play, the game feels broken, and even more confusing than it already is.

I'd like to see silence instead reduce the radius of the sounds you make to something very small, but have them play at half volume within that radius. This would retain its utility for getting around the map without detection, and getting within bite distance, but would negate it's effect once you are in close combat.

I feel like half of the benefit of silence right now is that it makes combat so confusing for Marines, and I don't think that makes for very fun gameplay.

Alternatively, it could silence all movement sounds but keep attack sound intact, similar to cloaking.

I think silence needs a bit of a Nerf. I love using it, but I think it makes the game less fun overall. When you can't use your ears to play, the game feels broken, and even more confusing than it already is.

I'd like to see silence instead reduce the radius of the sounds you make to something very small, but have them play at half volume within that radius. This would retain its utility for getting around the map without detection, and getting within bite distance, but would negate it's effect once you are in close combat.

I feel like half of the benefit of silence right now is that it makes combat so confusing for Marines, and I don't think that makes for very fun gameplay.

Alternatively, it could silence all movement sounds but keep attack sound intact, similar to cloaking.

When the skulk is biting you it often is already too late especially considering interp and pings. Really have to have have a perfect reaction.

@Vetinari I disagree with the "carapace is crucial in comp" thing. I love to go regen and heal myself behind the enemy lines while biting res. And since I am behind enemy lines biting res with a good amount of health I am also ready to flank pressure marines if my team calls for it.

Remember it was already nerfed by being split in two (phantom became silence and vampirism) and now requires you to sacrifice celerity/adren (as well as focus/aura if you want the full 'phantom' upgrade of silent cloaking)

I would like to remind you that before phantom, we had silence and camo separate for a long time.

If you didn't have to check your back and didn't lose track of them in fights then silence would become useless.

Then maybe we simply shouldn't have an upgrade like that, and replace it with something else. Although I disagree that it would become useless. An upgrade that makes your noise radius smaller so marines have a harder time spotting you behind their lines would still be super useful.

I think silence needs a bit of a Nerf. I love using it, but I think it makes the game less fun overall. When you can't use your ears to play, the game feels broken, and even more confusing than it already is.

I'd like to see silence instead reduce the radius of the sounds you make to something very small, but have them play at half volume within that radius. This would retain its utility for getting around the map without detection, and getting within bite distance, but would negate it's effect once you are in close combat.

I feel like half of the benefit of silence right now is that it makes combat so confusing for Marines, and I don't think that makes for very fun gameplay.

@Vetinari I disagree with the "carapace is crucial in comp" thing. I love to go regen and heal myself behind the enemy lines while biting res. And since I am behind enemy lines biting res with a good amount of health I am also ready to flank pressure marines if my team calls for it.

That was based on my outside view on comp and what I've read on the forum over the years. I personally think crag upgrades are all that important compared to shift/shade, except on Onos (where you get a significant of health) and probably fades (which I play fairly rarely, so again, outside perspective). It was just my understanding that those 2/3 extra bullets can be crucial to surviving early engagements.

This is almost exactly what ghoul's balance mod does. (Minus the halving sound volume/radius.) And it is very helpful in crowded, messy engagements where it can be hard to locate a skulk that is chomping on your ankles. Being on shade means there's an actual drawback to getting it early game, but you can get it together with celerity, so that's probably still an issue. Still, it's imo the best implementation of silence we have right now.

Leave silence alone, Skulks are already in a hard place for a majority of the player base to be utilized effectively (their weak, have skewed movement mechanics, are incredibly easy to kill while jumping or falling through the air, can be heard from 2+ rooms away and have huge hitboxes). You'v made the Skulk into a mostly sneaky, ambush attacker and now you want to make it even harder for them to played like that? Their becoming stationary traps that have to be initially holding a hiding place until someone (that isn't smart enough to check corners) passes by to get a kill or become a res bite bot, you cannot force people to use team work. Other playstyles for them are becoming more limited as time goes on. A large portion of players never Lerk or Fade, they just wait for Onos res because they feel hopeless playing them, don't let that feeling apply to Skulks as well.

Increasing silence-sound could be an overkill, since the radius you can hear stuff is already insane... but still, halving attacksounds is the appropiate thing to do, so you can bite rts in peace... and listen closely whether a marine is approaching

Making attack or movement sounds made players turn up the volume so they could hear it.

From my perspective UWE has been trying to both with what little resources they have given to the game. They don't have an AAA budget, let alone an indie game budget. They have the budget of a game that has been out 6 years. I want to say, don't half ass two things, whole ass one thing. I just don't think they have the resources to do it. Unlike many of the people on the forums, I guess I am just happy they are at least trying even though I may not like what they end up doing.

Separate some questions: is shift hive far stronger than the others? If so, is this a bad thing? If so, do we solve this by nerfing silence, by moving silence to another hive, or in some other way? If we move silence, where should it go?

IMO shift hive is the obvious choice in pubs, that this is bad for gameplay, that we should put silence back on shade and make attack sounds audible. Sure, fast silent skulls suck, but no more than silent wall hacking skulls or silent focus skulls.

What reasoning behind the move from shade to shift? I cant find it in the patch notes.

IIRC the change was done due to how efficient the combination of phantom (silence) and celerity was around that time. It should also be noted that most of the people who were in charge of the balance / comp mod around that time had kinda a "going back to the roots (ns1) " vibe (which included bringing back metabolize, hmg etc.), so moving silence to the shift (movement) hive made a lot of sense in that context because silence is a movement chamber upgrade in ns1.

I personally think the issue with silence is caused by two things:

The damage audio feedback is completely broken right now and we are about to fix it for the next build, which means that with silence you can basically land a hit before the marine is able to react based on the visual feedback (which is delayed compared to the audio feedback).

Silence like some other upgrades has no trade off which causes it to synergize with other upgrades without limitations. Something that could be tried is for example a movement speed reduction as trade off for being silent.

The above is my personal opinion on the matter and shouldn't be taken as statement what will be done balance wise in the future!

It would be good if any future changes to gameplay such as this could have a quick one liner explaining why it was done.

Fat chance. Communication has always been UWEs Achilles heel. Forums are apparently read but rarely do devs engage in proper discussion. Discord is read if you ping people but rarely has any discussion, and even in the balance channel it's damn near impossible to ask for even an explanation. If you're lucky enough to even get a response, they won't actually answer your question or give an explanation.

For a long time now I asked for silence back on shade, reduced base skulk sounds, reduced marine movement speed, increased gorge mobility.

It took over 9 months just from being in discord (so excluding alternative efforts) to actually get the gorge mobility mechanics rolling and I know that I wasn't even the instigator or only person pushing for such changes.

Remember when the big mods went down because the modders got dicked on with no communication from UWE? Remember when they turned around and promised better communication? Remember when that actually happened? I only remember the first two.

There is *no* reasoned debate or room for ideas and suggestions. It is virtually all done based on the whims of the few people who code rather than the those with good ideas. The forums and discord channels are a facade.

From my perspective UWE has been trying to both with what little resources they have given to the game. They don't have an AAA budget, let alone an indie game budget. They have the budget of a game that has been out 6 years. I want to say, don't half ass two things, whole ass one thing. I just don't think they have the resources to do it. Unlike many of the people on the forums, I guess I am just happy they are at least trying even though I may not like what they end up doing.

I think silence needs a bit of a Nerf. I love using it, but I think it makes the game less fun overall. When you can't use your ears to play, the game feels broken, and even more confusing than it already is.

I'd like to see silence instead reduce the radius of the sounds you make to something very small, but have them play at half volume within that radius. This would retain its utility for getting around the map without detection, and getting within bite distance, but would negate it's effect once you are in close combat.

I feel like half of the benefit of silence right now is that it makes combat so confusing for Marines, and I don't think that makes for very fun gameplay.

I've been saying this for a while, unfortunately our sound system doesn't make that easy. Volume, we can control easily for each sound, but changing the 3d distances is something static for each sound. So in order for this to work, we'd need to make 3 additional copies of every single sound affected by silence with the different ranges. It's certainly do-able... just not very much fun to work on. Then, if we ever wanted to change what those ranges are... ugh...